To add a little dopamine to your workday and turn choosing vacation options into an easy game, AI Engineer and Frontend Developer Serhiy Sidletskyi developed a new interactive service — "Vacation Wheel."
To add a little dopamine to your workday and turn choosing vacation options into an easy game, AI Engineer and Frontend Developer Serhiy Sidletskyi developed a new interactive service — "Vacation Wheel."
The idea to create a fan tool came from observing how difficult it is for people to sometimes make even the simplest choice - how to spend their free time. Instead of thinking too much, the developer suggested trusting in chance.
"Summer is a period of anticipation of a vacation: someone is already resting, while someone is just planning their trip, enjoying the pleasant anticipation. And some colleagues will generally spend the summer months in the "Work and Deadlines" mode. For many, the most difficult thing is not so much waiting for the vacation, but deciding how to spend it. I wanted to turn this moment from long doubts into an interesting game. These are times when most Ukrainians rely on fate every day, so let fate decide: "How will I spend my vacation?"" — Serhiy Sidletsky told dev.ua.
In short, the Vacation Wheel is an interactive way to experience the vacation vibe, where fate chooses the direction and artificial intelligence adds humor and irony.
The interaction mechanics are as simple and visual as possible: the user chooses who to spin the wheel for (for themselves or for a friend), presses a bright button and waits for the animation results.
After the spin, the system issues a personal scenario, which consists of 5 cards:
1st card: Creative hand-made fridge magnet template.
The other 4 cards: Variations on presenting the script in different moods — playful, cinematic, chaotic, and soft.
Thanks to this, everyone can choose the vibe that is best suited for sharing on social networks or sending to friends.
Serhiy Sidletsky paid special attention to the ethics and safety of content.
"I took special care of safety: the main AI system prompt explicitly prohibits using a toxic, derogatory, or offensive tone. Even in the "chaotic" version, a joke remains a joke, not an excuse to hurt someone," the developer emphasized.
It is artificial intelligence that makes the service lively and variable. Instead of a static pool of pre-written templates that would quickly get boring, algorithms generate unique text responses and visuals for each individual query.
The basis of the system was the Google Gemini model. According to Serhiy, the choice was determined by two factors: excellent work with the Ukrainian language and economic feasibility.
“AI in this service is the main creative! It analyzes vacation ideas, forms answers, and creates visuals. We chose Google Gemini as the main model — it interacts perfectly with the Ukrainian language, writes poems well, and forms short thoughts from large amounts of text. In addition, an important advantage of Gemini compared to the Claude model line is the cost of the API. If you have a limited budget, Gemini is exactly what you need. The “Vacation Wheels” service is optimized in such a way that even if 1,000 people spin the wheel every day, it will cost only $1,” explained Serhiy Sidletsky.
The “Vacation Wheels” project was launched just a week and a half after the launch of Serhiy’s previous development, “Salarymeter.” The new service is just starting to gain momentum, but users have already managed to spin the wheel 193 times.
Currently, Serhiy is focused on collecting feedback and preparing updates for the Dopamine Market ecosystem, which includes a new tool.
"The focus now is on analyzing feedback from real users and expanding interactivity: more mechanics, more reasons to come back and spin the wheel again. The main goal remains the same for the entire Dopamine Market - for each visit to give only pleasant emotions and help people keep their dopamine levels normal, without any real costs or risks," the project author concluded.
